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View Full Version : Wanted - Upgrade From Denon AVR-2805



Darren Cotter
15-03-2011, 14:11
Hi All,

At the moment I am using a Denon AVR-2805 AV amp. I would like to upgrade this to an amp that has HDMI inputs, and a better sound. My budget is up to £400.

Regards,

Darren

jon1
15-03-2011, 18:38
Hi All,

At the moment I am using a Denon AVR-2805 AV amp. I would like to upgrade this to an amp that has HDMI inputs, and a better sound. My budget is up to £400.

Regards,

Darren







Darren have a look at the onkyo..600 range..not that good at music but excellent at movies:eyebrows:http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/onkyo/txsr608/onkyo-txsr608-blk


jon

Jac Hawk
15-03-2011, 21:01
you're going to struggle to get a new A/V amp with HDMI that is good at music as well as movies for that budget, i might be wrong, what i would do is look on ebay at some of the older A/V amps try to pick out a one that gets good reviews, but it really depends what you intend it for, do you have bluray? do you want 5.1 or higher? why do you need HDMI? what will you use it for mostly, music or movies? These are some of the questions that need answered to enable the best advice to be given.

Darren Cotter
16-03-2011, 09:19
you're going to struggle to get a new A/V amp with HDMI that is good at music as well as movies for that budget, i might be wrong, what i would do is look on ebay at some of the older A/V amps try to pick out a one that gets good reviews, but it really depends what you intend it for, do you have bluray? do you want 5.1 or higher? why do you need HDMI? what will you use it for mostly, music or movies? These are some of the questions that need answered to enable the best advice to be given.

Hi,

I use the amp about 50/50 movies and music. I have seen Denon 2311's for around £450 new on eBay, so I don't think my buget for a second hand upgrade is that far out.

Regards,

Darren

Reid Malenfant
17-03-2011, 20:50
I reckon Mike is probably correct unfortunately :doh: If you think about it in monetary terms you really can't expect a great deal when you are asking for at least 5 channels of power amplification along with processing to decode the modern formats of digital information via blu ray etc..

I can see myself posting a totally seperate thread on the way i happen to do things & why i do things my way :eyebrows: It may not gel with a lot of people but it's one sure fire way of getting what you want at the end of the day & saving money...

You simply split the audio & video ;) Once you understand this then any upgrades become much cheaper as you only need to replace the source to improve things :cool:

Jac Hawk
17-03-2011, 22:01
One of the main reasons HDMI was invented was to get away from the multiple cables you would normally need to transport sound and video, and put it into one convientient package, however if you have your BD player, CD player etc. close to your A/V amp then you're not going to get any real advantages from HDMI, on my setup I run a Toslink cable from my PC and one from the XBOX360 to the A/V amp and a HDMI from the PC AND xbox360 to my TV, so ok I have a few more buttons to press to get the right picture and sound combo, but because i'm not interested primerily in having HDMI I looked for an older amp that was noted in the HIFI press for it's sound quality, not only for movies but music too, and to be perfectly honnest i'm very happy with it.

If you must have HDMI then you will pay a premium as it's what everyone wants, even though most people don't know exactly what benifit they will recieve by having this connection on the amp, aside from the obvious 'less cables', plus an amp equiped with HDMI is going to be relevently new and so be more expensive.

My advice for what it's worth is look for an amp that has only the connections you NEED, if you don't need HDMI then you can look at a wider range of amps and be able to pick one more easily that has been praised for it's sound quality, you'll probably save a load of money too.

Darren Cotter
04-04-2011, 08:18
I reckon Mike is probably correct unfortunately :doh: If you think about it in monetary terms you really can't expect a great deal when you are asking for at least 5 channels of power amplification along with processing to decode the modern formats of digital information via blu ray etc..

I can see myself posting a totally seperate thread on the way i happen to do things & why i do things my way :eyebrows: It may not gel with a lot of people but it's one sure fire way of getting what you want at the end of the day & saving money...

You simply split the audio & video ;) Once you understand this then any upgrades become much cheaper as you only need to replace the source to improve things :cool:

Hi Mark,

Can you explain how you connect your AV setup?

Regards,

Darren

Reid Malenfant
04-04-2011, 08:53
Sure, i'll get something up here after i've had another coffee :drugs:

:eyebrows:

Reid Malenfant
04-04-2011, 13:23
Hi Mark,

Can you explain how you connect your AV setup?
I'm only interested in sending video down the HDMI cable & as long as you understand that it makes things fall into place nicely.

With HDMI it's best to have a single short piece of cable between the BD/DVD player & the TV itself. The longer the HDMI cable the more corrupted the signal will be by the time it gets to the display, the reason for this is cable capacitance. Put simply the nice square waves of data get rounded off edges & it's not a good thing :rolleyes:

Now it'd be great to have this nice short cable but in the real world i have two displays, a TV & a projector :) To connect to both displays from the BD & DVD player i use an Octava distribution amplifier (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Octava-HDDA52-UK-5x2-HDMI-Distribution-Amp-v1-3b-1080p-/350219996763?pt=UK_ConsumerElectronics_VideoSwitch es_SM&hash=item518abd0e5b) (that's the exact model) which has a load of inputs & 2 outputs which can drive both displays simultaneously if needs be or just one at a time. It also has some clever circuitry inside that allows it to drive a longer HDMI lead than normal with less problems.

As you can imagine the projector has no speakers & most flat screen TVs have pretty awful ones most of the time (this Philips being a bit of an exception with a couple of built in subs) so i use my hifi system for sound.

This is the bit where people waste money & i refuse to...

Most people use the HDMI output to connect to an AV amplifier & let that do all the sound processing :rolleyes: Now that's all right & fine, there is no wrong way, but it gets very expensive come upgrade time :eek: The reason being is this... Take for example that i had an older blu ray player & i want to upgrade to one of the new 3D TVs. First up i'd need a new BD player, on top of that i'd need a new AV amplifier that is HDMI v1.4 compatable & then i'd need the TV on top of that :doh:

I save money because i make sure i buy a BD player that has 5.1 or 7.1 audio outputs & let the BD player do all the audio decoding ;) Therefore i'd only need to purchase a new BD player & TV - no AV amp would be needed!

The only possible advantage to using a system with an AV amp is room correction. Now i don't know about you but i don't know a single soul on here that uses room correction for their hifi let alone an AV setup :eyebrows: As long as you place speakers sensibly it's simply not needed & it may well cause more problems than it's worth if it's not implemented correctly. That probably means investing in some of the top of the range AV kit rather than an AV amp costing up to £1000.


So as long as you restrict the HDMI cable to video you can use any old AV amp & a lot of very good kit indeed goes very cheap precisely because people have to have the latest bells & whistles :eyebrows:

I feed the 5.1 output of my BD player to my Audio Research MP1 pre amp. I decided i wanted as good as possible surround sound along with hifi so it seemed a logical choice. If i upgrade my player or TV i don't need to look for a new pre amp! It's now furniture :)